Chapter 6
Sydney
I knew in the back of my mind that Hawk hadn’t gone to church. In all the years I’d lived alongside The Road Rebels, religion was not something they had ever delved into. It was probably a cover for something. Whatever it was they now did to get money. Back when I was running with them, they had the mechanic shop as well as the bar, but nothing else to my knowledge. Though they always tried to keep the women and children out of the loop with those kinds of things.
At any rate, I knew he wasn’t at church, and he was trying to diminish my knowledge of his whereabouts by feeding me the lie.
I wasn’t upset. I understood that’s what he was doing. I had rolled up onto his doorstep with his daughter, and now he felt it was his time to protect us. We were running from the DEA, so I knew I brought trouble to his doorstep with whatever operations The Road Rebels were running. He was taking a massive risk, taking both of us in. My risk of being followed was high, especially since the government was wanting to use the Iron Souls as an example of what happens to motorcycle gangs if they got caught.
But when four hours rolled around, I was beginning to worry about where he was.
I knew Hawk could take care of himself, I wasn’t worried about that. But with everything blowing up in our faces and me running to the only person I knew I could trust, it brought back a lot of memories.
Memories I wanted to keep at bay.
“Daddy… please keep your eyes open.”
“I’m fine, princess. Just restin’ ‘em.”
“You gotta keep your eyes trained on me, okay?”
I could still feel the warmth of his blood as I gripped my hands tightly. Emery was playing in the backyard out in the sun as I sat on the porch and watched. I made a pot of coffee after Hawk left and was slowly working my way through it. Emery kept asking when ‘Mr. Hawk’ would be home, and it only reinforced the truth I had yet to tell her. My hands were shaking, and my arms were warm. I looked down and saw gallons of blood splattered along my clothes. I wiped at it, watching it soak into my clothes as my eyes widened with panic.
And then it happened.
My father’s voice in my ear again.
“I’m gonna be all right, princess. Just hold yer chin up.”
“Daddy, there’s so much blood.”
I closed my eyes and tried to keep my tears at bay as bullets blew by my head. The wind picked up, rustling the few trees in the area as I tried to take some deep breaths. Bringing Emery to Hawk’s broke the only promise I ever made to my mother.
The only promise I ever made to myself.
“Hey, hey. John. Keep your eyes open, okay?”
“Hawk. The blood. I-I-It won’t-”
I could see Hawk peeling his coat off, tossing it to the side before he ripped his shirt over his head. I could remember counting the seconds it took for his white shirt to dye itself red in the life that dripped from my father’s bullet-riddled body. I sucked in a choppy breath through my lips, trying desperately to rid myself of the images as I latched on to Emery’s giggles.
I promised my mother I wouldn’t bring her around this kind of life.
I promised myself I’d raise her under better circumstances.
“Daddy? Daddy! Open your fucking eyes! Look at me! No! Daddy! Please!”
I could remember watching Hawk scurry to his father, shirtless and panting as Joe laid on the ground only feet from where we were crouching. Hawk’s father had been trying to get to his best friend. To make sure he was all right.
To make sure my father was still breathing.
I could remember sobbing into my father’s corpse. I could remember picking him up and holding him close to me. I could remember how heavy his body was. How it was limp in my arms as I cried into the bullet wound in his chest. I could remember how it felt to lean up against the barrels, cradling his twisted body into me as I learned for the first time what the term ‘dead weight’ really meant.
My chest was heaving, and tears were dripping down my face. I opened my eyes and saw Emery staring at me oddly. She was holding weeds in her hand she had picked like flowers as her auburn hair blew around her face. She stared at me with her father’s eyes while she tried to figure out what was wrong, and immediately I got up and went inside.
My legs felt like jello, and my heart was beating in my ears. I stumbled into the kitchen and dropped my coffee mug into the sink, bending my forehead over to lay on the cool metal surface. I tried to take deep breaths, willing my body to stop shaking. I knew Emery would follow me into the house, and the last thing I wanted to do was expose her to this side of me.
The side of me that panicked.
“Mommy?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I asked, breathlessly.
“You okay?”
“Oh yeah. Mommy’s fine. I’m just not feeling very well.”
“Wanna cuddle on the couch?” she asked.
Her question brought a smile to my face as I slowly raised my tear-stained gaze up to meet her beautiful green eyes.
Holy hell, she looked more and more like him every single day.
“I would love that,” I said.
She ran to the couch and jumped on it, cutting on the television. I snuggled down next to her, holding her head to my chest while she spread out along my body. We flipped through until we landed on Aladdin, a squeal of delight peeling from her lips. I ran her fingertips through my hair as I kissed her forehead, feeling her settle into me before I pulled a blanket up to cover us both.
I never told my mother about the Iron Souls. It would’ve killed her to know I had jumped back into the motorcycle life. But, I never brought Emery around them. They took care of me when I was pregnant and didn’t hound me about my decision to keep Emery away. They respected the fact that my mother wasn’t in agreement with how I had to live my life, and until I could get a place of my own, it was just easier to keep my daughter away. A few didn’t like it. They had helped me through the bulk of my pregnancy and helped me recuperate a bit, but the majority of the group understood.
Which was a relief to me, because The Road Rebels were not the same way.
With them, you were either in or out. If you associated with anyone regularly in the group, there was an attempt to induct you. They were very family-oriented, but it was born out of a necessity to keep those who understood their secrets close. The Road Rebels, before John and Joe, had been run by a President who was paranoid about any of their whereabouts or movements getting out to rival gangs. Everything about the way they operated was to be kept close to the chest, and if someone wanted to associate with a member and know the in’s and out’s, they had to become part of the group.
That’s why I left without ever looking back. My father spread the rumor that my mother had died so she could be free to live her life without being hounded, and I left without so much as a word back to anyone for the same reason. I knew they’d hound me if they knew where I was going, and I knew if they hounded me long enough I’d come back.
Come back to the group that had gotten my father killed.
It was the real reason why I didn’t attend his funeral… a decision that still rose guilty streams of bile up my throat when I thought about it.
I swallowed hard as I closed my eyes.
As I laid there, feeling Emery smiled against my skin, I cursed myself for coming here. For putting her right in the middle of this fucking life. If I knew what was good for us, I needed to take that black sedan as a signal. I needed to pack our shit up, put us back in my car, and keep on driving. Away from here. Away from The Road Rebels.
Away from Hawk.
But even with the promise I’d made for myself and even with the promise I’d made my mother, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t tear her away from her father any more than I could tear myself away from Hawk. It was a knee-jerk reaction, coming here and showing up, but one that wasn’t prompted by a random decision.
Being on the run was a risk I took on when I gravitated back towards the motorcycle lifestyle. When I found the Iron Souls and began running with them.
When I realized I wasn’t going to truly be able to leave that all behind.
The truth was, I really had nowhere else to go. My father was robbed from me at twenty years of age, and my mother had just succumbed to cancer. I would’ve simply continued to stay in her house and live out our days in it had the Iron Souls not been busted. I was on the run because of a group I spent maybe six years of my time with, and I had been thrust back into the territory of a group I’d been raised with.
I literally had nowhere to go. This was the only place I could be.
The movie droned on in the background as I felt Emery’s breaths evening out against my chest. I held her close as my mind swirled with that black sedan, wondering what in the hell it had been doing out there this morning. Was someone watching me? Was someone watching Hawk? Were The Road Rebels in trouble? Was there something I could do help?
The last question startled me as I clenched Emery close to my chest. Memories of running around with Hawk and practicing our self-defense with other members of the group caused me to draw in a deep breath. Even with the blood-soaked memories of how I lost my father, I still had wonderful memories of growing up around here. There was never a moment where I felt alone. Where I felt you didn’t have anyone to go talk to. There were fun weekend road trips where I got to experience the open road and take trips with my father. I got to run around campsites with other kids while we played in the water and slept around bonfires.
Hawk gave me my first kiss behind the dying embers of a hot fire on one of those trips.
Even with the threats that loomed over our heads, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t learn something new. Sure, we didn’t attend a regular school. We were all homeschooled by a couple of women who would volunteer to get their licenses through the county. But we learned in ways most children never did. They took us on trips to museums and candy factories. We would lay out at night and name all the stars we could see. We learned about constellations and burning gases and how the sun really shed its light.
I smiled at the memories as I felt Emery shift on top of my body.
I reached for the remote and shut the television off. It was approaching five hours since Hawk had been gone and I was beginning to get nervous. It was well past lunch time, almost colliding into dinner, and part of me wanted to call him and make sure he was all right.
But I didn’t have his number, so that was out of the question.
I slowly shifted Emery off me, then sat up on the couch. She curled into the cushion, pulling the blanket up onto her body while she continued to sleep. I bent down and kissed her, smoothing her hair out from her face as I smiled at her freckles. She didn’t have as many as me, but they were all congregated around her nose and cheeks. I memorized what she looked like in that very moment, curled up in a blanket that smelled of her father while she slept with a smile on her face.
I wanted to memorize every part of her innocence before she ultimately found out why we were house-hopping.
Why we had come to stay with Hawk.
Who Hawk really was to her.
I felt tears crest my eyes as I raised up from her. I tucked her in and ventured into the kitchen, cleaning up my mess from that morning. I was beyond conflicted. I wanted to shelter her from this life. Whisk her away to Northern California or Washington State. I wanted to use my two-year degree to get a job that would pay for us to live wonderfully, just like she deserved. I wanted to see her off to school and cook homemade meals she could devour at night. I wanted to decorate her room any way she wished and raise her in one home for the rest of her life.
I wanted to host sleepovers and be the ‘cool mom’ and have my house be a refuge for all her friends to come when their parents weren’t being as cool as I was.
But I missed the open road. I missed the wind in my hair. I missed the taste of sand and falling asleep underneath the stars. I missed having a big family, with lots of people to lean on at different times. I missed the fierce protection that came with the motorcycle lifestyle.
I missed having friends and owning my own bike. I missed the shared camaraderie and the rally we all went to.
But most of all, I missed Hawk.
I missed that man more than I could stand.
“Where are you?” I whispered it to myself as tears streamed down my face. I emptied the rest of the coffee pot into my freshly-cleaned mug as I tried to gather my mind. The last thing I needed to be was an unhinged mess when Hawk finally came through that door.
But the one thing I’d forgotten was how quiet he could be when he walked.
“Syd?” he asked as I gasped and whirled around.
“What’s wrong?”